Both Hands Full of It

It went on for about forty seconds, which is a very long time.

Somebody at the front said her name and then said four or five sentences that were accurate, specific, and warm, and about a hundred and ten people turned and looked, and then they clapped, and it went on, because a room that has decided to clap does not stop quickly.

And she stood there.

That is the whole of what she did. She did not wave. She did not do the thing where you point at somebody else. She did not smile properly, because the smile she produced was the one that happens when a face is asked to do something it has not been given instructions for. She stood there, entirely still, with her hands slightly out from her sides, for about forty seconds, and then it stopped and everybody went back to what they were doing and somebody handed her a cup of tea.

Nobody noticed anything wrong. She has checked, in a roundabout way, twice.

But she has thought about it for eleven days, and what she keeps coming back to is not the awkwardness. It is a physical memory, which is that halfway through she became aware of her hands. They were doing nothing. And it felt, in an absolutely literal way that she has never been able to describe to anybody, as though something had been put into them and she had nowhere to set it down.

That is the sensation. Both hands full and no surface anywhere in the room.

She has read things about this. She knows the vocabulary. Imposter this, unworthiness that, and some of it is probably relevant and none of it touched the actual problem, which was mechanical rather than emotional. Something arrived. There was nowhere to put it. She stood holding it for forty seconds and then it evaporated and she was left with the memory of having been unable to do anything at all.

You will have your own forty seconds. The moment something true was handed to you in public and your hands did not know what they were for.

The only picture we have of anybody holding one

There is exactly one scene in Scripture of people who have been given crowns, and it is worth noticing how brief it is and how much is in it.

The twenty four elders fall down before him who is seated on the throne and worship him who lives forever and ever. They cast their crowns before the throne.Revelation 4:10

Three verbs. Fall down. Worship. Cast.

And before any of that, silently, in the setup rather than the action: they have crowns. Nobody is described refusing one. Nobody in that room said it was nothing, or pointed at somebody else, or explained that they had not really earned it. The receiving is finished before the scene starts, and the scene is entirely about what happens next.

So the answer to her problem is not spiritual and it is not emotional. It is mechanical, which is exactly what she needed, and it is: there is a surface. It is in front of the throne. That is where a thing like that goes.

So take it plainly: you are holding something that has a place to be set down, and that is what Revelation 4 says in its own words, and it is the Holy Spirit who takes a scene at the center of everything and lays it down in a hall with a hundred and ten people in it.

And notice the word cast, which is not a gentle word. It is a throwing motion. This is not a careful placement or an apologetic surrender. It has energy in it, and the energy is gladness rather than embarrassment. The elders are not disposing of an awkward object. They are doing the most natural thing available to them in that room, at speed.

Which is worth saying because her instinct, if she ever finds the surface, will be to put it down apologetically, as though the crown were slightly shameful to have been holding. That is not this scene.

You have a movement available that is not a refusal, because the written word puts the receiving and the casting in the same paragraph without any embarrassment between them, and His Spirit is what makes that reach a woman who has spent eleven days on a memory of her own hands.

And there is one more thing in that scene worth having, which is who else is in it. Twenty four of them, doing it at once. Whatever a person feels standing in a hall with everybody looking, being the only one holding something is not part of the picture Scripture actually draws. You are one of a crowd doing the same thing rather than the single object of a room's attention, and the written word is what puts the number at twenty four rather than one, and His Spirit is the one who makes company out of what had felt like exposure.

What this site will never ask her to do

Now the guardrail, and it matters here more than almost anywhere.

Nobody is asking her to have deflected better. Waving it away is not the higher road, and if she had pointed at somebody else that would have been a way of getting rid of it rather than a way of handling it. The elders do not deflect and neither should she.

And being appreciated is not pride, and it is not danger, and the forty seconds were not a spiritual test she failed. A hundred and ten people were glad about something true. There is nothing in that requiring management.

Nor is the thing she did an entry anywhere. There is no account. The crown in this book is always placed on a head by somebody else, and the casting comes after the placing and never instead of it.

You are held by a regard that did not rise during the applause, because the written word puts our standing on Christ rather than on our record, and His Spirit is what makes that a floor rather than a phrase. You have nothing to have handled correctly, and Scripture is what settles that, and His Spirit is what keeps eleven days of replaying from turning into a verdict.